I have a MAXTOR 160P. It is an early version. The disk is spec to 163 gig. However this disk fails that. Linux can only format and see 38 geigs. Ok I can live with that.

1. The original disk would operate at 150 degrees, too hot to touch,. If I was working, I had to shut it down and let it cool off. I got disk errors to the extent that vi would garble text files.

2. fdisk has no effect on the disk or its format. Sync seems to not update the disk.

3. Now the disk is running much cooler. I do not get spontaneous crashes any more. The disk driver complains very little now days.


4 Since the 38gig disk is more space than I really need, I dont care if it is broken and I can only see 25% . A df shows 16% with EVERTHING I am doing. it just is not a problem.

5. Since I am building a compiler, I spend a lot of time debugging new code I have mangled. And the problems are now anomalous . MALLOC failed in malloc with coorect code. I input a print-statement and the fault went away..
Currently a Loop that should have 5 or 6 statements only shows the top of loop and the first statement. I changed the order and It only reports the first statement, What ever that maybe. I do not know what the real problem is nor do I know how to fix it. It makes GCC look bogus, It makes the libraries do strange things. I suspect it is a weird problem with the virtual memory unit.

6. I do not want to debug the system, I just want to work on my compiler.

Any helpful suggestions would be appreciated.
josephus

Sounds like you need to get a cooling fan in your system. Nominal tempurature is 45 degrees C (85 degrees F) . When I did processor validation, we would run them at a maximum 75 degrees C, but that is beyond the high end specification. I try to keep my system at or below 35 degrees C ambient tempurature. You can buy a hard drive heatsink that will help dissipate excess heat as well. Also, some basic things to consider:

Don't place your system next to a heater.
Keep your system clean. Open the case and blow out the dust every once in a while (more often if you are in a high dust environment or have pets).
Make sure the case is well ventilated. I remember someone bringing in a system to be repaired back when I ran a small shop. He had put masking tape over the vents to keep any dust from getting in, and unplugged all the case fans. After replacing the motherboard, memory, cpu, cpu fan, all the addin cards, and power supply, he learned that a little dust is ok, just keep it cleaned out.


Hope this is helpful.

I took the disk out of the computer and stood it on edge in a cool house. As long as the disk was hot I would get spurious errors. Currently the disk appears to be just slightly warmer than 80 degrees F. It is not giving me runtime errors. But the disk does act strangly. It used to boot continuously on bootup. It wouuld find errors and reboot, over and over. I stopped booting RO. Currently it takes two boots (about 10 minutes ) to boot. It now boots normally. But e2fsck still finds errors and calls for reboot. If I dont run e2fsck , there are no errors.

GCC and GDB are not working correctly. I dont know if it is GDB or GCC causing the strange results. but I suspect the disk
josephus